Harriet Rowlands was a drama teacher who drew on many influences, including the ethos of Dartington Hall school in Devon

My friend Harriet Rowlands, who has died aged 60, was an inspiring drama teacher at a number of Hertfordshire schools who had a reputation for being able to reach unreachable pupils.

As head of drama at Beaumont school, St Albans, Harriet guided her pupils through their teenage years with an originality and spirit that won her friends for life. A week hardly passed without her organising a theatre trip for her students. Before going to Beaumont, she taught at Loreto college, St Albans (1993-98) and Kings Langley (1998-2001).

Her teaching drew on many influences, including the ethos of Dartington Hall school in Devon, of which her stepfather, Leonard Elmhirst, was co-founder, and her own education at North London Collegiate school, Edgware, where a love of Shakespeare took root.

She studied music and English at York University, graduating in 1975. She went on to the Laban dance centre in south London and then gained her postgraduate teaching qualification at the Institute of Education, London University.

Harriet's family home in Finchley, north London, sparkled with brilliance and creativity. Her father, Alick Isaacs, discovered the drug Interferon and her mother, Susanna Isaacs-Elmhirst, was an eminent psychoanalyst. In 1980, in London, Harriet met Anthony Rowlands, who became executive director of CentreForum, a liberal public policy thinktank. Anthony, for 25 years a councillor in St Albans, also stood for parliament three times for the Liberal Democrats.

Fortified by their happy and stimulating 32-year marriage – the ceremony was at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1981 – Harriet was a cheerful and balanced individual who was able to spread happiness in the staff room, the classroom and beyond. She was a gifted amateur actor and a key figure at the Abbey theatre, St Albans.

However, after her retirement she fell prey to a cruel depression that blighted her last six months and caused her to take her own life. She will be remembered for the balance and warmth she created in the lives of others.